How This Once Broke Entrepreneur Built a Multi-Million Dollar Online Business

Lewis Howes is a former college All-American football player who once held the NCAA record holder for the most receiving yards in a single game (17 passes/ 418 yards in 2002). Howes played briefly arena football but broke his wrist two games in and was forced to undergo corrective surgery that ended his football career.

In 2012, Howes moved to NYC to play team handball for the New York Team Handball Club. Howes now plays for the USA Men’s National team.

In 2009, Howes co-wrote LinkedWorking: Generating Success on the World’s Largest Professional Networking Website, a guide to using Linkedin. He is also the author of The Ultimate Webinar Marketing Guide, which he published in 2012.

Howes has built several multi-million dollar online businesses, including SportsNetworker (2008), a sports-focused social media marketing consulting and SportsExecutivesAssociation, a membership community for sports executives, and InspiredMarketing, an educational social media community.

In the below 30 minute podcast, Lewis reflects on his experience as an entrepreneur and presents his six points of focus when starting out.

1. Start somewhere that you are passionate about! Passion first. The money will follow. You have to be excited about what you are doing…that is what gives you the energy to work 18 hour days and hustle your face off. Without hustle, this success is unlikely to happen and without passion there will be no sincere hustle

2. Find mentors. In your growth and acceleration, study as much as you can from people you admire or want to be like. Invest in your online education, invest in yourself. Go to conferences. Learn from those who have done it before you – – people of character whom you admire for what they stand for, their message. Reach out! Get in front of them.

3. Build an audience. Don’t worry about site, design.

4. Learn sales and marketing and sell, sell sell. Don’t be salesy! You will have to work your butt off. Find mentors and invest in education to do so. Learn how to do this as it works best for you. You can’t just put up a product online and hope people buy it.

5. Build credibility. If you want to build a business you need to have people believe in and trust you. You need to back up your content with credibitlity and authority to grow. Write books and guest post to gain trust in the community. Increase your personal brand!

6. Hustle. Hustle. Hustle. Be consistent. No one is going to hand you $1MM. And if they did it wouldn’t be worth it.